Cist, Labbamolaga, Co. Cork

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Burial Sites

Cist, Labbamolaga, Co. Cork

In a sand pit in the townland of Labbamolaga East, Co. Cork, a routine quarrying operation in 1948 broke into something considerably older: a small stone-lined grave holding the cremated remains of three people, a man, a woman, and a child of between four and six years old.

These were not buried separately but together, their burnt bones mingled in a single polygonal cist, a type of prehistoric box-grave constructed from carefully arranged slabs. Among the bones were a burnt bone pin and a small object described as a pendant, personal items that had clearly passed through the same fire as the dead.

The cist was investigated by archaeologist M. J. O'Kelly, whose findings were published in 1950. The structure itself was modest in size, roughly two and a half feet across and less than three feet high internally, with five sides formed from small and medium stone slabs and a sixth side of probable drystone walling. A single polygonal slab formed the base, and the capstone lay less than two feet below field level, which explains why the quarry machinery found it at all. Placed in one corner of the cist was a Food Vessel Vase, a ceramic type associated with Bronze Age burial practice in Ireland and Britain. This particular example was well made: bi-conical in profile, about four and three-quarter inches tall, with a decorated everted rim turned outward at the top and an incised pattern on the body arranged in horizontal zones separated by bands, a scheme O'Kelly described as reminiscent of basketwork. The decoration is metopic, meaning it is organised into repeating panels, a style that places it firmly within the Early Bronze Age tradition. At some later point, a separate pit-burial was cut into the top of the original grave, suggesting the location retained some significance, or at least remained visible, long after the first interment.

The precise location of the two cist burials in Labbamolaga East was identified more recently by local historian Nioclás Ó Duinnín, meaning the site now has a more firmly established place on the map than it did for much of the twentieth century. The Food Vessel Vase, with its careful incised geometry, is the most tangible surviving object from what was evidently a deliberate and considered burial of a family group, carried out somewhere in the north Cork landscape during the Bronze Age.

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